The trouble with W is getting him involved

April 6 2002

"The trouble with W". Photo: AFP

George Bush has finally realised he cannot risk continuing to do nothing. Gay Alcorn writes from Washington.

The weirdest day was Wednesday, the sixth day of all-out war between Israelis and Palestinians. Israel's tanks rolled into Nablus, cannons blazing. The Pope decried Palestinian "humiliation" and feared carnage in the holy city of Bethlehem. The European Union, dismissing Washington as all but irrelevant, announced its own visit to the region, and Egypt - a crucial US ally - bowed to public protests on its streets and at least symbolically cut off government contacts with Israel.

And the leader of the free world? George W. Bush was in the White House, being entertained by the furry puppet Elmo from Sesame Street and the singing Vowelles, a feather boa-clad troop from a children's show, who serenaded the President with his own special song: "I got W trouble/And I know what's to blame/It's because there's no 'wuh' sound/ In W's name".

Mr Bush loved it. "My mother used to say 'The trouble with W'," he said, "although she didn't put that to words." He made no comment on the Middle East.

It was a surreal scene that perfectly captured the moment. The "trouble with W", screamed Europe, Arab nations, the United Nations, virtually the rest of the world, was that he thought he could sit out the dizzying violence in the Middle East, get away with "understanding" Israel's military response to sickening suicide bombs without equally acknowledging the Palestinians' cries for a political solution, and treat the conflagration as entirely separate from the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.

The trouble with W was that he was so concerned with domestic issues, his critics said, and so narrowly focused on US priorities in its "war against terrorism" that he hoped that the two sides would eventually collapse in exhaustion and return to the negotiating table.");document.write("

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The trouble with W, argued Zbigniew Brzezinski, president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, was his "strategic incoherence" towards the region, and glaring inadequacies of the post-September 11 notion of dividing the world into good and evil.

"Unfortunately, most of life cannot be delineated in terms of black and white," he said.

The pressure built day by day, and the dam burst on Thursday, as Mr Bush jumped fully into the Middle East crisis, a 50-year-old problem that has confounded every president before him and now takes its place as his consuming diplomatic concern.

Analysts say the risks of engagement are high - failure and a conservative backlash at home - but the risks of doing nothing were much greater.

"When an 18-year-old Palestinian girl is induced to blow herself up," Mr Bush said on the White House lawn, "and in the process kills a 17-year-old Israeli girl, the future itself is dying, and the future of the Palestinian people and the future of the Israeli people. The world finds itself at a critical moment."

Even early this week he saw no need to switch course. There was no need to dispatch the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to the region, because Mr Bush had "full confidence" in the ability of his envoy, Anthony Zinni, to bring the parties together.

Mr Powell will now leave for the Middle East next week, his first visit in nearly a year.

Last Saturday Mr Bush strongly backed the military response of Israel's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, to suicide bombs as justifiable "self-defence". He blamed Yasser Arafat for the rising violence, appearing to give the green light to Mr Sharon's "isolation" of the Palestinian leader in his battered compound in Ramallah.

The US had backed a UN resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories - although it insisted the resolution specify no time frame - but Mr Bush refused to urge it publicly. As for Mr Arafat: "I believe he needs to stand up and condemn, in Arabic, these attacks." He had not spoken to Mr Arafat. "He doesn't need a phone call from me. All he's got to do is watch what I just said."

Mr Powell's Middle East trip is the headline news from Mr Bush's widely praised speech, but as crucial was an abandonment of the Administration's insistence - backed by Israel - that violence cease before the parties could move to political negotiations leading to a final peace accord.

The Administration's argument was that the process should start with the Tenet ceasefire plan, named after the CIA director, George Tenet, then move to the Mitchell plan, after former senator George Mitchell, who set out mutual-trust measures such as Israel halting the building of settlements in Palestinian areas, and resuming negotiations towards a peace deal.

That timetable became increasingly untenable, as it gave Mr Arafat no political incentive to offer his people in return for an all-out effort to stop violence. The White House was frustrated with what it saw as Mr Arafat's duplicity, and particularly infuriated when, in January, Israel seized 50 tonnes of mortars, rockets, machine-guns and other weapons bound for the Palestinians. That discovery scuttled Mr Zinni's second visit to the region, and the US says Mr Arafat's explanations were unconvincing.

The Administration insists it has not been disengaged from the Middle East, but argues that, at every step, its efforts have been rebuffed. The killing of two dozen Israelis sitting down at Passover last week scuttled Mr Zinni's latest ceasefire attempts, and hardened the Administration's notion that Mr Sharon was fighting terrorism just like it was.

But, The New York Times reported, Mr Zinni had handed Israelis and Palestinians a "Joint Goals" document last week that set out areas on which the two sides could agree and disagree. Israel said the document was fine. The Palestinians were furious, because there was no mention of political talks towards their goal of an independent state.

By Wednesday an uneasy Mr Powell was acknowledging the Palestinians' point.

"The new element that I'm going to be pressing hard in the days and week ahead is that the political component of this process has to be brought forward much more quickly than we might have thought," he said.

The White House says the shift came as the violence escalated. The protests in Arab capitals - particularly in Egypt and Jordan - saw the US's own obsession with toppling Saddam seem less and less relevant in the region.

The US's best friend, the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, abandoned his plan to release an intelligence dossier on Saddam's alleged crimes, and any military action appears to have been indefinitely delayed.

In the Arab world, resentment against the US grew, as its perceived bias towards Israel made the likelihood of even friendly governments backing US strikes against Iraq all but impossible for now.

A senior US official explained Mr Bush's change of heart thus: "As we watched the situation over the days since last Friday [when Israeli tanks surrounded Mr Arafat's compound] we became very concerned - and we examined it several times a day, constant, non-stop meetings, and came to the conclusion that the President had to act to try to stop what we saw as a spiralling level of violence that might expand beyond the current area.

"And we saw a deteriorating situation with some of our best friends in the region, but, more importantly, some of Israel's best Arab friends in the region."

Those best friends - Egypt, Jordan, Turkey - will be crucial if the US is to convince the Arab world that Iraq can be invaded without the real-life clash of civilisations that Osama bin Laden has so far has failed to instigate.

Not that Mr Bush has softened towards Mr Arafat, whom he still sees as untrustworthy. Mr Bush has good personal relations with Mr Sharon - the then foreign minister gave him an "incredible" helicopter tour of Israel during a visit in 1998. Mr Bush's religious convictions also dispose him towards the Israeli cause.

Eighty per cent of US Jews vote for the Democrats, but the Israeli position has broad support, particularly among conservative Christians. Last month Senator James Inhofe, a Republican, said Israel should never give up Palestinian territories because God wanted Israel to have them. "God said so. Look it up in the book of Genesis."

All US presidents are, to different degrees, pro-Israel, for reasons of empathy as well as perceived national interest. The suicide bombs are a painful reminder of September 11 and how US military might cannot defend against suicidal fanatics.

On Thursday Mr Bush saved his harshest words for Mr Arafat, a man he has refused to meet or even shake hands with. Mr Arafat had "not consistently opposed or confronted terrorists". His situation now was "largely of his own making".

And yet, for the first time since this latest crisis began, Mr Bush outlined its historical and political context and insisted that Israel withdraw its troops. Israeli settlements in occupied territories must stop, he said.

"Israel should also show a respect for and concern about the dignity of Palestinian people. It is crucial to distinguish between the terrorists and ordinary Palestinians seeking to provide for their own families. The Israeli Government should be compassionate at checkpoints and border crossings, sparing innocent Palestinians daily humiliation."

Mr Bush never wanted to become deeply involved in the Middle East, rejecting president Bill Clinton's micro-management of the issue partly because it was Mr Clinton's policy and partly because it ultimately failed to bring a final agreement.

Nobody believes Mr Bush will find engagement any less hellish than did Mr Clinton.